Bingo: You, as in me, who is desultorily dragging her way through yet another mediocre thriller.
As I mentioned in my last review, I decided to break up my more mind chewy reads and go on a streak of thrillers and mysteries. So far, the mysteries are panning out fine. Unfortunately, my eyes grow weary of the standard, similar thrillers I’ve been reading as of late. I have one more from that stack, and then two promising mysteries to finish the project. So let’s get through this penultimate thriller together.
Harlan Coben’s Tell No One is a seriously confusing book. There are so many threads, characters and POVs (goes back and forth from first person to omniscient with lightning speed) that I had to dutifully highlight and annotate every person and story turn in my Kindle app or I would have lost the plot entirely.
The first person narrator is David Beck, a doctor who works in a low-cost clinic. The book opens with him and his wife Elizabeth taking a quick sojourn to a family property near Lake Charmaine. They go skinny dipping, and Elizabeth returns to shore before Beck. Beck soon hears screams and frantically swims to help Elizabeth, only when he emerges from the water, he is beaten over the head with something and passes out. Days later they find the kidnapped Elizabeth dead. Eventually her death is attributed to a local serial killer.
The book then hops eight years forward. Beck–insanely in love with his wife, as she was with him, and still hardcore grieving–continues his work at the clinic. Two men are found buried with a baseball bat by Lake Charmaine, which opens up the possibility that Elizabeth was not killed by the serial killer after all. The case is re-examined, and law enforcement turns its eyes on Beck, as they wonder if he hired the men to kill Elizabeth.
Soon, Beck is receiving mysterious emails that imply his wife is still alive. Unbeknownst to Beck, his home and emails are tapped by two thugs who work for a local rich patriarch, Griffin Scope, whose son Brandon was murdered over a decade ago. It is unclear what the connection is here, but Coben drips little connections and possibilities here and there–none of which are easily followed as more and more situations and characters pile onto the plot.
Among the many characters, are some totally stereotyped drug dealers who–quelle surprise–are Black. They are both killers and heroes, the latter not making up for the cliche and insulting characters. Coben tries his hand at AAVE, which is incredibly cringey. Given that these are pretty much the only Black characters in the book, the narrow role of drug dealer sticks out like a sore, racist thumb.
Other characters get mixed in, like Elizabeth’s parents, various friends and relatives, and ever more connecting threads that get unbelievably tangled by the end of the book. At one point, I wrote in my notes:
Why is Griffin mad at Elizabeth? Why did Elizabeth provide an alibi for Brandon’s killer? Who are those two dead men? Who killed Brandon? What happened to Elizabeth? How does Elizabeth’s father factor in? What the eff did Brandon have to do with Elizabeth and why did he beat her up?”
And this is just a peek at the convolutions. There were twists, of course, none of which were terribly satisfying, especially as they involved details and characters that I easily forgot. I have one more standard, every day thriller to read, and then it’s a dive into my next mystery by one of my favorite authors, Patricia Highsmith. A balm for my reading soul.
